Nameless
by Stella Marshal
Summary: If you have nothing of your own, what are you?


Disclaimer: I do NOT own Star Wars. This is not a fun fic.

* * *

He never knew what name his parents would have given him. He didn't even know their names or what planet they were from. The midwife took him away and checked his blood after he was born as with the other children at the hospital and every other child in the Republic. The tester flashed a steady pulse and the midwife returned to the couple without him. She explained while the Jedi took him to Coruscant. They had never even laid eyes on their child.

* * *

Growing up in the Jedi temple, he had a name but he was never called it very often. More likely, he was youngling or less often initiate. His saber instructor called him little hawk-bat, because he was always trying to copy the acrobatic fighting form of Master Yoda. The librarian called him flighty, because he could never stay still during her talks on history and legends. But in the end it was always youngling. The others were all called youngling too, as if they were all named that. As if they were all the same.

* * *

He was twelve when a master chose him and he became Padawan, or Apprentice. His master was cold, pragmatic, and dedicated to the Code. Attachments are the path to the Dark Side, his master told him. Repeated it in every lesson and mentioned it every chance he got. All things come to an end, his master would tell him, even our time together. Together, they battled pirates and crime lords, settled conflicts, and brought relief to beleaguered citizens. After every success, it was good work, Padawn. For ten years, it was good work, Padawn.

* * *

After he was knighted, he had too many names to count. At the peace accords on Alstaire, he was Master Jedi. Battling the Black Sun Syndicate and the Hutt Crime Lords, he was called Jedi scum. Undercover as protection for a senator, he was named Keytar Solara. Disaster relief on a far-flung world and he was Ky'tnas, which he was told meant savior in the native's tongue. For a while he was Master to a young Devaronian girl, but he eventually sent her back to the Temple to become a healer. He was a knight, a hunter, and a warrior. He was a diplomat, a protector and a healer. He was many things to many people and nothing at all at his core.

* * *

At Geonsis, he was simply a body and a sword. He was one of dozens of warriors that Master Windu had summoned to rescue Masters Kenobi and Skywalker and Senator Amidala. As he fought against the droids, his name melted away. He kicked and sliced, struggling his way through the maelstrom. Every droid he threw or stabbed or crushed was replaced as soon as he was finished. He was pressed back against his fellows, as Master Windu and Count Dooku argued. When Master Yoda arrived with the clones, he was shot in the back boarding his transport. He ended that horrific day as one of the hundreds of patients in the Temple infirmary.

* * *

During the Clone Wars, he was General. He had never stayed in one place long enough for the troops to call him anything but General. At the Temple, he was Master again, but soon enough, he would be called back to the Outer Rim where he would become General once again. He fought his way across countless worlds, all as nameless as he was. He never did anything to make it onto the Holonews, but he had never been particularly strong or unique. He was ordinary, or as ordinary as a Jedi ever became.

* * *

He was at the Temple when Order 66 came down. He was one of the faceless crowds as the very soldiers they had lead turned on them. He barricaded himself in one of the meditation rooms with several other knights. They listened helplessly as the clone troopers and their own Chosen One ravaged the Temple. Nothing could stop the screams of the dying as the Order and the Republic crumbled before their very eyes. When the door burst open and troopers rushed in like a deadly flood, most fled or fought, but he stayed rooted to the spot. He stared, slump-shouldered and dead-eyed, at the anonymous troopers as they fired off a lethal storm of blaster fire; as one trooper placed a bolt precisely between his eyes. When the sun rose on the Jedi Temple once again, he was one of thousands of brown-clad bodies burned at the Temple entrance.

* * *

He watched from the Netherworld of the Force, as Palpatine revealed himself as a Sith Lord, as the Republic became an Empire, and as freedom died. He watched as the Chosen One became a monster, and as oppression, fear, and death spread across the Galaxy like a plague. As the Empire strangled whole worlds in its fist. He watched as a Sith apprentice found love, cast off his chains and sparked a rebellion. He watched as the Rebellion struggle and fail, seemed doomed to die but at one decisive moment strike a mighty blow. He watched as the Son of Skywalker fanned the flames of hope across the Galaxy, as world after world rose against the Sith, as the Chosen One fulfilled his Destiny at last. He watched as the Republic and The Jedi were reborn. He watched, one of thousands, empty, nameless, forgotten.


End file.
